PERSONALITY CHANGES

One of the most unsettling things about living with an alcohol abuser is HOW THEIR PERSONALITY CHANGES when they are drunk.

Quiet people can become abusive, noisy people can become withdrawn and remote, some may spend the day sleeping on the lounge, some may be awake all night - the person you love becomes someone quite different!  And they behave differently. This is an example of how alcohol can take over a person's mind and make serious changes to them.

Its like living with a different person. I used to long for 'my girl' to come back: that is, when she stopped drinking for a while. The 'other woman' she was when drunk I did not like at all. We had no life together.

So what can we do???

This is not easy to live with. One of the ways of coping is to run away from it all. But, mostly we LOVE the person who's drinking and want to help them. So we stay on.

What works is to focus on ourselves. If you have been reading these posts you will have seen by now that there is not much we can do for our alcoholic except leave them alone:
A dear friend of mine used to sum it up thus:

• KEEP YOUR MOUTH OFF THE PERSON
• KEEP YOUR MITTS (HANDS) OFF THE PERSON
• KEEP YOUR MIND OFF THE PERSON.

The 3M rule!

By starting to think about looking after YOURSELF, you will take your mind off your drinker.

Read the HELP PAGES on the right, and some previous posts, and see how I learned to live with an active drinker and gave her a chance to find her way to sobriety.

I had to leave it to her : all I could do was apply the 3M rule and just help when she needed it.

MY DRINKER GETS ANGRY WITH ME !

Perhaps you are experiencing times when your drunken loved one is yelling and cursing at you - really trying to create a big argument with you, maybe even becoming violent.

What is THAT all about???

What we have learned is that really, the drinker is horribly angry at THEMSELVES.

For giving in to drink, or for feeling so bad, or maybe feeling a lot of guilt.

Often this results in an outburst at YOU, for no apparent reason. You may be cursed, belittled, sworn at, ridiculed: anything that could make you mad and create an argument.

THEN your drinker can blame YOU for causing the argument and make him or her self feel a little better:  "after all, it was you arguing that made them pick up a drink, wasn't it?"

This is the warped thinking that goes on when your loved one is in the grip of alcohol - no sense at all. Logic goes out the window. This is what happens.

So what can we do?

First rule is:
Do not argue back.  Find something to do that takes you away from the yelling or cursing. Do not give them a reason to blame YOU.

Next:
Protect yourself and children if you have to : take shelter somewhere else, leave the house in bad situations, call the Police if it's serious. We do NOT have to put up with unacceptable behavior.

And:
Be aware that when it's all over, your drinker will most likely not remember a single thing about the incident. As if it never happened.
So don't beat on them when they are sober: they will think you ARE picking on them. Try to have some compassion for a human being whose mind is being wrecked by an insidious disease, alcoholism.
Try to have some compassion.

Finally,
Think about reaching out for some help, as I did.

WHY ME ??

When we first get hit with the realisation that our loved one is in the grip of alcohol, its fairly normal to ask oneself : "Why am I in this situation??" "What did I do to deserve this??" 

 We feel like a victim, isolated, alone with this horrible problem.

Maybe we are trying to hide everything from the family, friends, neighbours, relatives ....

It all makes us feel angry and alone. This often happens to us in the early days.

But feeling like a victim just fuels our anger, and in anger we can hit out at the drinker, and really make things worse.

First thing to realise is: we are NOT ALONE - there are thousands of us people around the world who are affected by someone else's drinking. Just like us.

Second thing is to understand that WE NEED HELP.

We may think: NOT ME! I CAN FIX THIS!

Try it by all means: you will most likely just make things worse.  YOU will feel worse.

LOOK FOR HELP. See where I found help in those HELP PAGES over on the right.  The help I found kept me going through all the tough years.

I wish for you that you get help too - you are not alone.  Read on ....

WE'VE Got to fix this drinking problem!

If you find yourself thinking this :" WE'VE got fix this drinking problem" then you are headed for disappointment, and more trouble.

Long experience has shown us that WE cannot fix anything to do with alcoholism.  WE can do nothing.

The only person who can overcome the drinking problem is : The DRINKER.

It's sad, is it not, that we, those who live with an active drinker, can do nothing.  But that is the cold hard truth. We can do nothing.

There in NOTHING we can do to help the drinker stop, except changing our own attitudes. To learn more about what this means, look in the HELP PAGES over on the right.

The drinker has a long, hard road ahead IF she or he wants to one day stop drinking.  It will be the hardest thing they will ever have to do in their lives: to find a way to stop drinking. To stop picking up that first glass.

We, on "the other side" must surely admire anyone who manages to find the gift of sobriety. And respect that person as overcoming a major hurdle in life.

Unfortunately, we are Powerless over Alcohol.

But there ARE some things we can do, if we are willing to CHANGE, that will help our loved one along their journey.

Check the HELP PAGES.

And, God Bless - you are not alone.

ALCOHOL CAN CONTROL THE MIND

One of the things we have been talking about is THE POWER OF ALCOHOL over a problem drinker.

How its STRONGER THAN WE ARE - or even THE LOVE OUR DRINKER HAS FOR US.

Its hard to grasp that our problem drinker DOES LOVE US STILL, but now, the alcohol comes first. That's  awful to realise, but its what happens.

Once alcohol takes a grip of someone's mind, it starts to control them. We often think that we are living with a different person - I certainly did - when my wife was drinking. She became someone completely different to her usual self, and I hated the change. I used to long for 'my girl' to come back.

Alcohol wreaks so much damage that it has become regarded as a DISEASE OF THE MIND.
The World Health Organisation certainly classifies it as a disease, and it affects millions throughout the world.

Now here is an important point:

If Alcoholism is a disease, then

I  HAVE  TO TREAT MY DRINKER AS IF  HE/SHE WERE ILL

Think about this: 

If my drinker suffered instead from, say Multiple Sclerosis, would I get mad at him or her????

So we have to learn NOT TO GET MAD AT OUR DRINKER.

He or She is UNWELL - very unwell.

Realising this, we can begin to have empathy for their position - they are in the grip of of sinister, powerful and baffling mental disease.

They need a lot of help from AA - but it may take time for them to realise how deeply in trouble they are, before they reach out for help.

Meanwhile, we have to have empathy and start to look after ourselves. We CANNOT HELP them at this stage. Except by not getting angry with them - they are sick.

I suggest that you look back over some of the earlier posts about caring for oneself.

And remember - you are not alone in this.  Many of us have been where you now are.

I wish you peace in your mind this week.